As part as WP2, existing technical and organizational innovations have been reviewed, from both inside the target districts, e.g. local experience gained by innovative farmers or traders, and outside the target area, by documenting promising innovations that have been tested elsewhere and assessing their potential for the target villages.

Under WP2, village community are engaged in the design of technical or organizational alternatives to the problems identified and prioritized during the Community-based Agricultural Development Plans (CADPs, see WP1) process. Villagers are then involved in testing the selected innovations (e.g. new cropping systems or livestock management) in village demonstration areas selected collectively during CADP process.

EFICAS project supports village communities in managing their on-farm experiments that will gradually become part of an ‘Experiment–Demonstration–Training’ network managed by a consortium of stakeholders (i.e. farmer groups, district officers, etc.) with the support of the project. The objective is to facilitate the emergence of an innovation network involving multiple experimental, demonstration and training devices (e.g. technical service centres, farmer field schools and on-farm demonstrations), all articulated and integrated within existing extension activities developed by the District Agriculture and Forestry Offices (DAFOs) and projects.

The main operations related to WP2 are presented below: